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Monday, July 11, 2011

Conservapedia makes the news again!

Imagine your kid came home from high school one day and recited the day’s lessons:

-Modern kangaroos are descended from two ancestors on Noah’s Ark.-Dinosaurs may still live among us.-Islam is one of the world’s most violent religions.-Evolution is racist.-Many liberals don’t think lying is wrong, and even delight in it.-Public schools make homosexuals.-Atheists tend to be fat, and obesity impairs brain function. (This point is accompanied by photos of overweight atheists.)

Many parents would march into the principal’s office or storm the next meeting of the school board, demanding an explanation for a misguided curriculum that defies science and, well, common sense.

But this is regular reading material for a few hundred home-schooled students in New Jersey. In this state, there are no laws shielding thousands of these students from lesson plans that recognized educational experts would consider nonsense.

...

But like his website, Schlafly’s teaching methods are far from mainstream. He believes in giving boys and girls separate tests, to prevent competition between the sexes and promote chivalry.

"Boys generally will not ask out a girl who does better than a boy on a test," he says. "I explain this to parents. We may think that’s wrong, but human nature is what it is. It’s not going to change, no matter how much we try to tell the boy it has nothing to do with the social relationship. Girls should be aware of that."

Yes, his girls’ tests sometimes had fewer questions, he said. But he was not trying to be discriminatory. He says he’s not sure why some girls took offense, and it may be the result of an inferiority complex caused by liberal culture — though on his own website he writes, "Think girls can excel in math as well as boys can? Liberals teach they can, which is teaching a falsehood."

And yes, for those of you who didn't know, in addition to being the czar of Conservapedia our old buddy Andrew Schlafly also "teaches" high schoolers. Just give it a moment and the nausea that idea provokes will fade to manageable levels. Anyway, it's worth reading the rest of the article, if only to get a sense of the full magnitude of Schlafly's fail, but I'd avoid the comments if I were you- they will damage your faith in humanity.

So how is Conservapedia itself reacting to this expose? Eh- about how you'd expect:

Or, to quote:

The liberal Newark Star-Ledger released its article on Conservapedia and it can be found HERE.As the article about Conservapedia rises to become the 6th-most-commented-on article on the nj.com website, "njaymom" responds to the liberal claptrap with deserving sarcasm:

"Yes, yes! In the interest of truth and education, the state should determine what are 'bogus teachings' and bogus religions (if any should be permitted at all) ...." [emphasis original]